If you have ever seen a satellite pass across the night sky - a tiny dot against a backdrop of stars - you could be forgiven for thinking that it was far, far away.
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But space is closer than you think.
When the International Space Station passes overhead it is as close to Perth as Albany, which is closer than Melbourne to Canberra. Just 400km.
That is the furthest humans have travelled from the surface of the Earth since the last Apollo mission.
Growing up in Australia it felt like space was out of reach, belonging to the so-called superpowers. America's lead in space exploration often overshadowing other nations' achievements.
NASA is a household name and rightly so - they dare mighty things.
For a young Aussie, it seemed like a career in space was a world away.
Now, that dream of space is within our reach. The approaching launch of a homegrown satellite, set for Saturday, August 28, designed and built in Western Australia over the last four years.
Australians have been making our mark in space from the very beginning. In 1957, the Space Age began when the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1.
In that same year, rocket testing began at Woomera in South Australia. Within 10 years we had launched our first satellite, WRESAT, from that same site.
For context, we were the seventh country to build and launch a satellite and the third to launch our own satellite from our own territory.
In the Apollo era, Australia played a crucial role in tracking, with more stations operating than any other country outside the US.
Hopefully, we all know the story of the Parkes Radio Telescope (aka "The Dish") and its role alongside Honeysuckle Creek in relaying television footage of Apollo 11 and Armstrong's historic first steps on the moon.
Despite rocketing ahead in the early days, a lack of commitment and foresight from a string of successive governments had left us in the dust - until now.
Luckily, we love playing the underdog.
Our best and brightest, who left in search of careers in space, have begun returning since the formation of the Australian Space Agency.
This defining moment in our history will decide the role Australia will play in how space is viewed and whether we will have a voice in how space is utilised. No matter where you are on Earth, space is the same distance above you.
For now, most high schoolers in Australia still see NASA as the path to space and without inspirational homegrown projects, that mindset will be hard to shift.
Particularly in the throes of a global pandemic, that road may seem almost impossible for the emerging generation.
In WA, even the east coast can seem a world away. Most of us never imagined that we would get to work on a space project, let alone develop Western Australia's first satellite - Binar-1.
We want to inspire the nation to tune in and watch as our satellite is launched from Cape Canaveral and to know that space is here, and it is within reach. For more, visit binarspace.com.
Benjamin Hartig is Binar space program project manager at the Space Science and Technology Centre, Curtin University.
